Catheter-over-needle (CON) and catheter-over-wire (COW) systems are well known in the medical arts for introducing medication or other treatments into the vascular systems of animals. A typical prior art CON system, such as the MILACATH™ Extended Use CON, available from MILA International, Inc., Erlanger, Ky., USA, comprises a flexible catheter tube (also referred to herein generically as a “catheter”) mounted to a hollow catheter hub structure having laterally extending perforated wings. The system includes a hollow rigid insertion needle extending through the hub and catheter to facilitate insertion of the catheter through the skin and into an underlying blood vessel. Appearance of blood at the outer end of the needle indicates that the catheter and needle are emplaced within the blood vessel. The needle is then withdrawn and discarded, and the catheter is advanced to a desired distance within the blood vessel. The hub, which may include perforated hub wings, is then sutured conventionally to the skin to keep the catheter from being forced out of the vein.
Some other prior art catheter systems employ other components to assist in emplacement of the catheter, such as a guide wire in COW systems, but the basic principles of emplacement are the same.
A well-known operational problem in the use of prior art catheter systems is the difficulty and time consumed in suturing the catheter hub to the skin. This can be especially troublesome in veterinary applications wherein the animal patient may be large, active, and/or dangerous, and time is of the essence.
What is needed in the art is means for mechanically attaching a catheter hub to the skin of a patient without conventional suturing.
It is a principal object of the present invention to obviate the need for separately suturing a catheter hub to the skin of a patient.
It is a further object of the invention to facilitate, and to shorten the overall time required for, intravascular installation of a catheter.